Strigilis

Either power or phone out every time I try to SEND, life at the end of the line. Brutally hot again, so doubly glad we restored the air conditioner. Huge benefit party for the museum at the Board President's house, Chris and Marilyn, on Friday night, so D and I spend the day running around and delivering stuff: booze, wine, beer, coolers, wine glasses, items to be auctioned, glass coffee mugs (I think glass coffee mugs are stupid, a prejudice based on having known a lot of potters), printed bidding sheets, a small amount of signage. Some of us are confused and interested that this particular party/fund-raiser is panning out to be so successful, maxed out at 140 guests, $100 each for finger-food and free drinks, hot mid-summer, outside. A beautiful place, maybe that's enough, on a high ridge looking right out on the Ohio River; a beautiful house too, as they say, 'well appointed'. To start the day, as I usually do when I get to work: we have a Met Museum day calendar, cards in a plastic holder, the permanent collection at the Met; a pic, provenance, dates, materials, and I shuffle the front card to the back, revealing a new art work. Today was a Roman, I don't know what to call it, large handled thing, in marble, and the description said 'strigilated with snake handles'. We were right on that. What the fuck is a strigil, because there must be one for something to be strigilated, and probably a strigilator and a strigilatee. Latin is my only other language, before I went to Janitor College, I was studying to be a monk, so I have good Latin dictionaries, I can't wait to get home, but because D and I are comic by nature, we start doing strigilation riffs that really are quite funny. Strigilis is a strigil (as I thought) a scraper for the skin used by bathers. More than that though. Also used by various gymnasts, runners and boxers, who had oiled their bodies, then performed in dirt arenas. You get covered in crud. Before you dip in the common hot tub you need to scrape the shit from your body, and there was a tool, a strigil, made of bronze, used for that. The working end, beyond the handle, carried that curved line, just like what appears on that Roman thing. Marble is fairly soft. I can scratch it with my Swiss Army knife. A bronze strigil would be fine. The next hardest thing is always better, if you're trying to wear something away. One thing harder than another.